West in New England

A blog about genealogy and thoughts about the various roots and branches of my family tree as well as the times in which my ancestors lived.Included are the West, White,and McFarland families.WARNING:DO NOT TAKE ALL OF MY FAMILY RECORDS AS GOSPEL. ALWAYS CONFIRM YOUR OWN RESEARCH!

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Monday, March 30, 2015

When I first started out researching my family tree, I was excited to find that some of
my ancestors had been killed in the New England colonial Indian wars. (They, on the
other hand, probably would have rather skipped the whole experience.) But after awhile,
as I discovered more such deaths, I was struck how some of my ancestral families had
worse luck than others. Such is the case with my Frost ancestors, and in particular my
8x great grandfather William Frost. Here's what Everett Schermerhorn Stackpole has
to say about William in Old Kittery and Her Families

William Frost witnessed a deed at Winter Harbor in 1667 and bought land in Saco of William Phillips in 1673. It may have been he who had a grant of land on Crooked Lane, in Kittery, in 1658. The Indian War drove him to Salem, Mass., where he was living, 1675-9. William Frost, cordwainer, of Salem, bought land in Wells, Me., in 1679, and had various grants and mill privileges in Wells till 1690. His estate was administered in 1690 by Israel Harden, and William Frost, Jr., was bondsman. Roger Hill wrote to his wife, 7 May 1690, "The Indians have killed Goodman Frost and James Littlefield and carried away Nathaniel Frost and burnt several houses here in Wells" William Frost married Mary, dau. of John and Elizabeth (Littlefield) Wakefield, granddaugher of Edmund and Annis Littlefield. Children were:William m. (1) Rachel and had a daughter born in Wells 30 Sept. 1695. (2) 5 April 1706, Elizabeth Searle in Salem, Mass.; d. in Salem 23 Sept. 1721. Ch. recorded in Salem: Benjamin b. 24 June 1707; Elizabeth b. 22 Aug. 1708, m. John Brown; Benjamin b. 24 Sept. 1710; Hannah b. 4 July 1712, m. John Prince; Mary b. 2 Dec. 1714; William b. 4 Oct. 1715; Lydia b. 22 May 1717, m. William Cook.

So William and his brother in law James Wakefield were killed, and William's
son Nathaniel was carried off by the Indians, all in 1690. This was years after the end
of the King Philip's War, during which the Frost family had retreated to Salem, Ma, The
rest of the family seems to have returned again to Salem after William's death, where his daughter
Abigail Frost married my 7x great grandfather Amos Upton.

Sunday, March 29, 2015

The 13th New England Regional Genealogical Conference is only a few more weeks away,
(April 15-18 2015 at Providence, R.I.) and it's loaded with knowledgeable speakers giving
presentations on a variety of interesting subjects. One of those speakers will be professional
genealogist Michael Brophy. He's done research for the Who Do You Think You Are on Gwenyth Paltrow and for Dead Money, an Irish TV series. He specializes in Irish and Irish-American
genealogy and in heir tracing, as well as technology for genealogy. Michael also is my fellow
resident of Abington, Massachusetts, a heavily Irish-American community.

The organizers of the Conference asked New England genealogy bloggers to help get
out the word by conducting email interviews with the speakers. I chose Michael because
of my own interest in my Irish heritage, and he graciously answered some questions for
me:

1. What prompted you to become a professional genealogist?After a beloved Aunt died on my maternal side her son published a book that included a well researched family history. After admiring the work, I asked my recently retired father what we know about the Brophy side. He replied “Not much”. That set me us off on a father-son research project to find out as much as we could about our ancestry. A few years later, after taking several courses and attending a number of conferences, I started to take on clients for research and giving lectures.

2. What are the unique challenges of researching Irish genealogies? Some the main building blocks of genealogies in the United States are federal census records and vital records which are birth, marriage, death and divorce records. In Ireland, the most of the 19th century census records were either destroyed deliberately by the British government or lost in the destruction of the Irish Public Records Office in 1922. Civil registration of vital records did not start for all Irish citizens until 1864, a late start when compared to the vital records we have for most New England town dating back to colonial times. Other records such as tax records and church records are typically used to compile genealogies that are not nearly as complete as the records we have in the US.

3. We live in a state, Massachusetts,with one of the largest Irish-American populations in America.
What are the the advantages and disadvantages of researching Irish-American genealogy here?

The advantages are we in Massachusetts are the most open record state in the nation. Vital records have no restrictions, meaning that anyone can view any birth, marriage, or death record up to the present day excepting special cases such as adoption and illegitimacy. Our records repositories are close by in the Boston area and are easily accessible. We have an active genealogy community here with experience and know how in researching Irish-American families.I suppose the drawbacks are that getting into Boston to the record repositories means traveling into Boston with all the associated headaches with traffic and parking. As with Irish-American research, researching a common Irish surname such Murphy, Kelly, or Sullivan will require a lot of patience and persistence as you eliminate the possibilities. Published genealogies of Irish-American families in Massachusetts are rare when compared to more established families in Massachusetts and elsewhere in New England.

4. Assuming we aren't still buried in snow drifts, will you be attending the Abington St. Patrick's Day Parade this year?

My family and I were there and the parade was great as always. We kept moving to stay warm!

Michael will be giving a variety of presentations at the NERGC:Snag-it For Genealogists on "Tech Day", Wednesday, April 15 9:30-10:30am.Descendancy Research on Saturday, April 18 8:30-9:30am Kilroy Was Here: A Genealogy Case Study of a WW II Icon on Saturday, April 18 3:15-4:15pm.

He'll also be holding a free Special Interest Group discussion on Thursday, April 16 at
7:45 pm in the evening. The subject will be Irish genealogy.

Friday, March 27, 2015

For this week's entry in the 2015 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks Challenge, I'm looking into
the family of Samuel Upton's wife, the Frosts. The furthest back I can take that line
is to George Frost, Sarah's grandfather and my 9x great grandfather. I know nothing
about where and when he was born, nor do I know the name of his wife, nor the
date of his death. Given that he lived in an area of coastal Maine that suffered several
Indian attacks, it's possible any vital records were destroyed. What I do know is what I
found in this passage from Everett Schermerhorn Stackpole's book Old Kittery and Her Families:

George Frost lived at Winter Harbor, Saco, and was appraiser of the estate of Richard Williams in 1635. He served on the grand jury in 1640. Nothing more is known of him, but the fact that several Frosts appear in his vicinity a generation later, that can not be traced to any other ancestor, warrants the belief that he was the father of the following. Goody Frost was assigned to a pew in the church at Winter Harbor next to the pew of Goody Wakefield, 22 Sept. 1666.Rebecca m. Simon, son of Robert Booth of Saco, who was born in 1641. They removed to Enfield, Conn., and she d. in 1668.1 John m. Rose___

Wednesday, March 25, 2015

I recently decided to finally take the plunge into backing up my files in the "cloud".
There are a lot of programs to choose from and for awhile I stressed out over which
one to choose. Dropbox, Google Drive, and One Drive were my final three choices, and
I ended up choosing Microsoft's OneDrive based on two features: first, the free 15GB
storage, and secondly, the OneDrive app for Kindle.

I went to the Micrsoft OneDrive website and created a Microsoft account (using a
different password than the ones I use for Gmail and Facebook). I then saw I could add
an additional 15GB by linking my Camera Roll to my OneDrive account. I knew I had a
Camera Roll on my Kindle, so if I was able to make that link I'd have a total of 30 free GB
to work with for my genealogy files.

Next I went to the Kindle App store and downloaded the Onedrive app. Once I did that,
I was able to link the Camera Roll and got the extra 15 GB. Now came the work. I have
over 110 surname folders and 2.66GB of images and documents in my genealogy files on
my laptop. Being paranoid, I didn't want to Move all those files to the cloud, just Copy them
there. I went to the Onedrive folder, then to Documents and created a Genealogy folder.
Then over the course of this last week I gradually copied everything from the laptop to
the OneDrive cloud.

When I first started and checked the OneDrive app on my Kindle, the screen looked like this:

Pretty looking but I wondered if all those thumbnails might be a drain on my Kindle's battery,
so I changed to the more practical List format:

One suggestion: whether you Move or Copy folders to OneDrive, do it one folder at a time.
It's much faster.

And since my first post about the Kindle, I've learned how to take Screen Shots with my
Kindle Fire HD6: you press the Sound Volume Bar and the Power button at the same time.
I don't know if this works for earlier Kindle models, but at least there won't be any more camera
reflections on images from my Kindle's screen.

DISCLAIMER: I neither work for nor receive any compensation from Amazon or Microsoft.

Tuesday, March 24, 2015

It's time for this year's edition of the American Civil War Genealogy Blogpost
Challenge. This year I've picked a submission deadline of May 13thto honor
May 13th, 1865, the date of the Battle of Palmito Ranch, Texas. Palmito Ranch
was the last battle of the Civil War.

This is how you can participate:

Did you have ancestors in America during the Civil War? If so, where were they
and what were their circumstances? How did the Civil War affect them and
their family? Did the men enlist and did they perish in battle or die of illness?
On which side did they fight, or did you have relatives fighting on BOTH sides?
How did the women left at home cope, or did any of them find ways to help
the war effort? Were your ancestors living as slaves on Southern plantations
and if so when were they freed? Or were they freemen of color who enlisted
to fight?

When the war ended, what did your ancestors do? Were they still living where
they had lived when the war began, or did they move elsewhere to find a new
home?

Have you visited a Civil War battlefield or monument to those who fought?
It could be connected to your family history, or just one that you've visited
at some point.

If your ancestors had not emigrated to America as yet, what was their life
like around the time of the Civil War?

The 150 year celebration of the Civil War is a great source for those of us
blogging about our family history. So, let's do a little research over the coming
weeks between now and May 13th. Find out the answers to the questions
I asked and write about them. Or if you think of another topic to do with your
family history and the Civil War, write about that. Send me the link when you
publish it on your blog and I'll post all the links here on May 31st.

This will be the final Civil War Challenge from me, (unless I'm still around in 2035
for the 175th Anniversary), so if you couldn't take part in the earlier editions, this is
your last chance to do so.

Monday, March 23, 2015

It's 31F degrees as I type this on March 23rd. Three days into spring and it stillfeels like Winter. It's not surprising, I suppose, given that there is still so muchsnow on the ground.

We broke several regional records this Winter here in New England: Boston hada record amount of 94.4 inches of snow fall in 30 days, 24 Jan to 22 Feb. The old totalsnow amount record of 107.6 inches was broken and we've had 110.3 so far. Februarywas the coldest and snowiest month recorded since they started keeping records backin the late 1800's. As a result, many unusual things happened this Winter:

The icing over of many of the bays and harbors along the New England coastline led to:

-Coast Guard Icebreakers having to work further south than normal in New England. Yjeferry from Hingham to Boston was suspended for several days due to ice, as were the ferries from Woods Hole and Hyannis to Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard.

- A Coast Guard cutter spotting a coyote running across the ice over Hingham Harbor.

- A herd of deer falling through the ice at Wareham Harbor. Most of them could not be saved.

- Ocean water so cold it formed "slurpee waves".

- Small icebergs washing ashore on Cape Cod.

And the deep snow caused: -The suspension of mass transit and commuter rail service in the Greater Boston area.

-The endless search by the highway departments of cities and towns for somewhere to put the snow lining the streets and covering sidewalks.

- The snow was so high people were jumping out of apartment windows and off roofs into snow drifts. Many of them were dressed in bathing suits. I can only ascribethis as perhaps the effects of cabin fever.

- There were quite a few memes going around on Facebook about the weather. My favoriteswere the mock Ken Burns style documentary, complete with "Civil War" type narrationand music, and another that paired snow photos with quotes from Samuel Beckett'splays,

It's definitely been a Winter to remember. And even though it is Spring, the snow season is not over yet. We could still add more snow to that total.

My 4x great grandfather Francis Upton continued the family tradition of having a
large family; he and Sarah (Bancroft)Upton had twelve children. John Adams Vinton
gives a list of them in The Upton Memorial, but when I double checked the information
against several Maine record collections at FamilySearch, I found some discrepancies
in the dates. So I've put my corrections in red ink below: The children of Francis and Sarah Upton, were—

John6, born July 11, 1828; married June 14, 1855. He served in the 10th Reg't, Me., Vols., in the war of the great rebellion. He was killed while shackling cars on the Grand Trunk R. R., in Bethel, Me., July 31, 1866. ((born 11Jul 1824))
pp199-200

Francis and Sarah's daughter Hannah is my 3x great grandmother through Betsey Jane Moore who
married Amos Hastings Barker.

Saturday, March 21, 2015

The 13th New England Regional Genealogical Conference is only a few more weeks away,
(April 15-18 2015 at Providence, R.I.) and it's loaded with knowledgeable speakers giving
presentations on a variety of interesting subjects. One of those speakers will be historian Michael
Tougias, the author and co-author of bestselling books on stories of survival such as Ten Hours Until Dawn and The Finest Hours. He also co-authored King Philip's War: The History and Legacy of America's Forgotten Conflict with Eric B Schultz, and his presentation at NERGC
will be "King Philip’s Indian War in New England" .

The organizers of the Conference asked New England genealogy bloggers to help get
out the word by conducting email interviews with the speakers. I have Colonial
ancestors who fought in King Philip's War so I was familiar with Mr. Tougias' book and he
graciously answered some questions for me:

1. How did you first become interested in the King Phillip's War?

I grew up in Longmeadow Mass and remember seeing various roadside signs about this war and wondered what it was all about. When I learned it had a higher per capita casualty rate than the civil war, I became very interested. Then when I learned that the Natives were winning in the first few months I was hooked!

2. Why do you think that one of the bloodiest wars in American history is among the
least known?

I think the text books used in the schools skipped right over this period because it didn't fit with the "all-american" view of the first Thanksgiving, etc. So they conveniently jumped from the Pilgrims land here and the next thing you know we are in the American Revolution, skipping over a hundred years history!

3. What was the biggest effect on the English settlements in New England from the war?

It all depended on where you lived. If you were in CT, the colony escaped with just one attack (Simsbury), while MA and RI were devastated, and took years to recover.

4.You've also written a novel about the war, Until I Have No Country. How did that come
about?

My historical novel Until I Have No Country, was something I wanted to write since I was a boy. I had dreams about this period and felt that if I could time travel I'd love to go back and see New England before the colonist's had expanded to every region. I also felt readers would connect with a book told with balance. That's why part of it is told from the perspective of a Native American, Tamoset, and part from Colonial farmer John Homer. I'm an avid reader of historical fiction, and the best books have a realistic love story, and so Until I Have No Country also has a love story: between Tamoset and another Native American. Even in war, there is love and day to day living.

My thanks to Michael Tougias for taking part in this interview. If you had ancestors in Colonial New England at the time of King Philip's War, Mr. Tougias' talk will give you some new insights into their lives, as will his books.

You can see the information here on how to register for the NERGC, and see the Conference programhere.